Check you out! You're the first option for yahoo's "leopard print prom dress" search in their offbeat prom dresses! Craftster rocks! (I wish the pics of your dress were loading just now so I could tell you how much the dress rocks, too. )

Well ego-strokes are all well and good, SHOULD people have access to the number of rocks that get thrown at them and at others?

I'm not sure how exactly rocking gets tallied, whether it's straight numbers or proportional to the traffic the specific board it's on gets. Some boards on here just get more traffic than others, and something on a busy board might tally more rocks simply because more people see it, while a phenominal project on a lesser-trafficked board would rack up smaller numbers. If selecting the featured projects is proportional, or takes into account that sheer number of rocks isn't the only factor, do you want to open yourself up to potential criticism from a multi-rocked project that was passed up for one that earned less rocks? ("Why didn't you pick my awesome project for the featured projects? I got 150 'this rocks' hits, and that smelly old Nintendo quilt you picked only got 50.") Leah, it seems like you'd be the one that would directly end up dealing with that kind of potential fallout.

I don't know how this fits in with the actual process, and whether there are people who might feel snubbed, but, well, the thought occured to me.

#3 bothers me, i understand segregating info vs. compliments for ease but i only click this rocks on stuff I absolutely adore. and I'm afraid if that was they way you left compliments it would take away some of the support craftsters offers all levels and areas of crafting

That was one of my major thoughts, too. I can like something and think it's worth commenting on without loving it, which means I'm not going to hit the "This Rocks" button for it, unless, of course, the intent is to change what exactly "This Rocks" means? Because I think it's worth commenting on things that maybe just wiggle or teeter a bit instead of just full-blown rocking....

On the one hand, I like the idea of being able to see if/when crafters say something I made rocked, and what exactly they said about it--who doesn't love a little ego stroke now and again?--but I feel a bit uneasy about some of these.

I have seen awesome swap items, so I think the button needs to remain on all the posts. But then I was wondering: does anyone ever click the "This Rocks" for a non-picture post, such as a tip posted in a longer thread? Because if someone posted some ingenious tip for doing something difficult, even if it's buried in someone else's project thread, I'd love for people to rock those, too, and for those to get collected somewhere, so when I want to try that same thing I can easily find the most ingenious of tips. But if no one ever used the button for that, well, I guess that isn't really useful.

I'm running late to travel this morning, but I wanted to post a pic of my super package from sparklypants before we hit the road:

When we get back, I will edit this post with better pictures and much gushing. Everything was wrapped in awesome purple fabric: awesome purple bat hook, super-soft wrist cuff, hippo-head pouch (with suction-cup spiderweb inside), stuffie with attitude, and beautiful rainbow lizard mirror. That's my cat trying to sneak up for another round of sniffing--she sniffed everything diligently, except for the stuffie, which she ignored pointedly. I think she felt threatened.

Thanks, sparklypants, for an awesome package!

--awesome package post, part 2--

OK, so I've got all the close-up pictures ready to roll now. I love my package from sparklypants!

First, a close-up of the bat hook:

I love the color and texture of the paint, and of course I love the rubber bat! I had a hard time photographing this, because the paint apparently had a very attractive smell for Pandora Underfoot (the unusually creepy-looking cat trying to creep up in the picture above). I needed a hook for my bathrobe, so this is perfect!

Next, the lizard mirror:

I love the rainbow effect of these little rubber reptiles, and this mirror is going to my office so that I have a place to touch up my lipstick after lunch when I'm teaching. It is, however, coming back home for the summer, because it is too awesome to hang on a wall unseen during the summer months.

The hippo pouch:

I have a soft spot for hippos that may trace back to a childhood love of the game Hungry Hungry Hippos, and making this guy's head into a pouch was brilliant! He has a little velcro closure on the back so that you can stuff him fulll of whatever you need to carry. I'm having a hard time deciding what I want to keep in my hippo's head, because I'm waffling between wanting to use him all the time where people can see him and wanting to keep him safe at home so he stays looking nice. There's also the cool suction-cup spiderweb that was in his head when he arrived--I put it back on the purple fabric to help it show up better than it did on my crappy carpet.

The wrist cuff:

This cuff is very super-soft, and it features a clever velcro closure for easier donning and undonning. I wear wrist cuffs frequently to help with my tendonitis, so this is a great swap item for me!

And last but not least, the attitude-laden stuffie:

I love the expression on this stuffie's face! This stuffie is not going to take any crap from anyone and is not easily impressed. (It probably votes two paws down for every movie it sees!) It's absolutely adorable, and, as I stated above, the cat won't go near it, which is pretty comical since she's such a world-class sniffer.

I loved this package, right down to the shiny purple wrapping, and I'm enjoying the contents thorougly. Thanks, sparklypants, for an awesome swap!

Thanks for all the compliments on the sock llama--it was my first sock animal ever, and I completely winged it by glancing over the monkey and elephant tutorials posted in the toy section.

I uploaded a pic of the bunnies before I left for school this morning, so I'll pop that in here. Excuse the overabundance of green--I needed a backdrop that wouldn't reflect, and I was taking these at the same time that I was taking the mock vacation shots of them in front of stone monument postcards for the paper-crafting bunny's scrapbook, so the book I used to raise them up past the white edge of the postcard and the paper grass that I put under them are serving as backdrops.

They all have crafty usernames, some slightly punny, and I don't know if I can recall them off the top of my head. I think the pink punk one, with her duct-tape wallet and pierced eyebrow, was PunxieBunny, the green stitching bunny with the knitting was bunneedle (knitting on toothpicks? I don't recommend it ), the blue papercrafting bunny with the scrapbook is OrigamiRabbit, and the orange jewelry/beading bunny is beadyeyebunny, or something like that. I have the original scrap of paper that I sketched their characters out on at home, so I could look it up later.

They're really easy to make, and if you're using the baby washcloths they wind up small enough to stick in plastic eggs, so non-crafting versions might make good Easter basket stuffers--they come in pastel, too. If you want a little puffy part on the butt to stick your pom on, fold diagonally, then roll the washcloth up into a thin strip--there will be a thin little "tail" that hangs over the edge in the center, which should go the outside when you fold it. If you want a flatter bunny butt, lay the washcloth out and, with each hand at opposite corners, fold those corners in toward the center until they meet in the middle and then fold those two rolls together into one strip (like folding a one-bread-slice sandwich). For either version, fold your strip/roll in half, then bend the pointy ends backwards and secure with a rubberband. Add whatever embelishments you want--eyeballs, noses, tails, ribbons, etc.

I visited no less than 11 Dollar Tree stores (1 in Oshkosh, 1 in Fond du Lac, 1 in Neenah, 3 in the general Appleton area, 3 in Green Bay, and two more [Wausau, Chippewa Falls] when I went to visit my family) during the course of this swap, and I have to say that the selection varies greatly within a single chain. Only one store had the safari animals (and farm animals), and less than half carried yarn, and a few of those only carried the patchy-dog Voodoo yarn in zombie green (excuse me, "oasis") and black. I was amazed at how different the selection was within only a 20 mile radius!

The shadowboxes and plaques go perfectly!

And I'm thrilled that sparklypants likes the package, because I had a blast making it!